So Sly
by DarkStarsShineToo
Summary: Everyone's favorite raccoon is here to spin a few tales. Sly Cooper recounts various run-ins with the beautiful Carmelita Fox and lets the players of his game into his head for the first time.


There really was nothing like sneaking into a huge corporate ball dressed impeccably in a suit, almost unrecognizable without my mask and signature blue outfit.

It was tricky, navigating the crowd and effectively keeping up the ruse. Being the cunning Cooper I was, however, I was doing pretty well. Guards that had just hours before been searching for me and chasing me with their fists or weapons waving around above their heads were now chatting and laughing with me. It was thrilling, really. No one knew who I really was - or that I was planning to steal the most precious items they had been guarding with their lives.

"Keep in character, Sly!" Bentley's voice periodically buzzed in my ear as he chattered nervously outside in the van.

When I got the chance I would reply, usually something sarcastic. "Oh, come on, Bentley. Trust my acting skills. I once won a Grammy, you know."

"You mean you stole a Grammy," Bentley replied dryly, and Murray chortled in the background.

"That's the same thing, isn't it?" I smirked as I weaved between the crowd.

I was being careless, I knew, but really I saw nothing to worry about. Nobody was noticing my talking to Bentley, and if they did I had quick responses prepared.

"Sly- wait! Don't turn that corner!" Bentley suddenly squealed.

I stopped dead in my tracks. Instead of turning the corner I popped my head around it, pulled it back quickly, then inadvertently shoved it back around.

I understood why Bentley had told me to stop. The long, blue hair hung loosely around the slim figure of the most gorgeous, orange furred psychopath I'd ever met.

It didn't matter that she continuously tried to kill me - or cart me off the jail, I never could tell which. I was always captivated for a split second when she popped up. Of course I always recovered quickly; I had to, or risk being captured. Being captured would not only put me behind bars and create quite the predicament, but it would also end the chase. The exhilarating chase, the one where when I was in the van I would look back and watch her sprint behind us, body reaching and working and - ahem.

Yes, Inspector Carmelita Fox was just around the corner, speaking politely to one of the guards with a cheesy smile plastered on her face.

It would seem that she, too, was undercover and trying to gather intel. Her presence complicated my mission considerably, that was true - I could distantly hear Bentley and Murray bickering from my earpiece - but, as always, I felt excitement ball up in my stomach. Exhilarating as much as the chase was the anticipation of the chase, the time before she found me where I could sit atop a building and watch her stalking far below with that plasma gun pointed in front of her, stance expectant and offensive with a promise of the lethalness that was no lie.

Her dress was as blue as her hair, complimenting the orange that was everywhere else. The way the dress hugged her body was my main focus for a moment, and my tail shuddered and flicked behind me. Her big, brown, calculating eyes strayed from the guard talking to her - or rather her chest, from where his gaze was set - and drifted around the room, toward where I was standing awkwardly to peer around the corner at her.

I quickly pulled myself together and my head back around the corner. I still had a mission to accomplish, and I had to even if Carmelita was there. Truth be told, my focus was probably going to be the biggest issue. Getting around the party undetected by someone who would obviously recognize me would be a lot easier if it weren't that particular fox.

"Sly!" Bentley sounded exasperated, as if he'd been calling my name that entire time. It was very possible he had and I'd been too preoccupied to notice.

"Uhhh... Oh, sorry Bentley." I loosened my bow tie and pulled at my shirt collar.

"You can ogle Inspector Fox later, Sly. You've got a job to complete." He chastised. I could hear the amusement in his tone, though he was very serious about finishing my job and moving on to the next phase of the plan.

"Ogle her? That's crude, Bentley. I was merely admiring her... Attributions." A smirk pulled at the edges of my mouth.

"Ugh, Sly!" I could almost see Bentley shuddering at my words. I chuckled. "Just go find Dimitri. He should be here somewhere and he should have the information we need."

"Easy," I peered around a few guards and located Dimitri proudly modeling an orange and purple suit near the bar. Of course.

"Watch out for Inspector Fox, Sly. She doesn't know you're here yet but if she sees you she won't hesitate to act and blow your cover."

"Right. Talk to Dimitri, beware Carmelita, and get out as quick as possible." I paused and stepped around a portly guard with his flashlight still strapped to his belt. "I've got this, Bentley."

"Whatever you say, Sly. I'll be monitoring from the security cameras we hacked and I'll warn you if I see trouble. Just pay attention to me this time."

I rolled my eyes and approached Dimitri, who decided to give me a particularly hard time collecting the needed intel. I had to resort to complimenting his fashion sense and intelligence before I could get him to tell me, and by then I felt considerably less manly. So of course I flicked my tail, told Bentley I had what we needed, and strolled toward the door, hoping to find a guard patrolling outside to pickpocket or mug or something so I could regain my thief like dignity.

Carelessness was my undoing.

"COOPER!"

A blast of hot, blue plasma shot just past my tail, and I flicked it in front of me to swat off the sparks before they had a chance to catch the fur on fire. Frowning, I turned to Carmelita, but it immediately turned to a smirk.

"So, Beauty Queen Fox. Have you by any chance seen the Inspector anywhere?"

She scowled and pointed the gun at me again. "How funny, Cooper. I thought it was rather ironic that you are parading around dressed as a gentleman, of all things."

"Ouch, that stings, darling. And here I thought we were having a moment." I held my hand against my chest, as if gripping at my aching heart. Truthfully it was about to beat right out of its cage, but it had nothing to do with pain or fear. The chase was coming, and it was going to be a spectacular one, I could feel it in my Cooper bones.

"We'll have plenty of time for a heart to heart when I have you in an interrogation cell!" Her French accent rolled the words smoothly off her tongue, and my smirk broadened.

"Sounds lovely. I'll bring the wine..." I paused, and Carmelita growled at my impishness. "But only if you catch me first." With the last words I flicked off the suit and pulled my hat out of my pocket. My blue outfit I'd had on underneath the entire time in case I needed to ditch the suit and make a quick getaway. I'd left my cane propped against the wall outside the window ledge, and I wrapped my fingers around it as I dove out the third story window, flipping through the air with the ease of a Cooper and years of thieving practice.

Carmelita's yell sounded behind me and she, too, jumped out the open window, making a flip less graceful than my own but landing perfectly on her feet nonetheless.

And so it began.

I stayed to the rooftops, running across the occasional phone line or perching atop a chimney to regain sight of my darling Inspector Fox. She was glued to my tail, in a metaphorical sense, of course. Stalking on the street was her forte more than running across roofs and scaling the distance between buildings. Her gun was pointed in front of her as she ran. She was nearly a match for me in agility, but we both knew I had the advantage with my altitude.

My height gave me the advantage of being able to slip away whenever I needed to, but not the gift of proximity.

I slowed my run and perched on a phone line above where Carmelita was about to run. She skidded to an unexpected yet graceful stop, spinning her stun gun in her paw, then planting her paws on her hips.

"Finally decided to stop running like a child, Cooper?" She asked, voice challenging.

I pushed off the phone line and flipped twice before my feet hit the ground a little less than four inches away from her. "Oh, I assure you, Inspector," I purred, head tilting, "I'm no child."

Her breath caught as I tucked a flyaway strand of blue hair behind her pierced ear, which was standing straight. Alert. I had to fight my smile.

"Perhaps not... Physically..." I knew when it occurred to her that the statement was very true because her eyes roamed over my entire body. Deceptively small, many would say, and surprisingly muscular. Stick thin, my opponents said, yet I could still best them in a fight and leave them moaning on the ground. Carmelita was right, though, about my mentality being slightly childish. An inner child, if you will, was as ever present in my head as was the instinct to fight or take flight, to catch myself when I fell, or to make a backward swipe with my cane when an opponent I was trying to lose was getting uncomfortably close.

Apparently I was getting a bit uncomfortably close for Carmelita. She pushed me back and I dropped the strand of hair that was curled around my finger. "No. You're a bad boy. You're a criminal!" I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or herself. I decided both. Both sounded about right.

"Are you trying to tell me you've never been a... Bad girl?" I couldn't help dropping a wink at the end of my sentence. Call me childish, but it was my specialty to lay the charm on thick.

Her eyes narrowed. "I'm a cop, Cooper. And I don't appreciate your innuendos." She raised her stun gun like a threat, and a grin spread across my face as she did.

I rolled my tongue to imitate a purr, my eye dropping into a wink yet again. "Naughty girl,"

She opened her mouth as if to yell at me in French, which she happened to like to do despite my complete inability to understand what she was saying to me, but she didn't get a chance. I yanked her close by her arms and planted a kiss to her lips, then slipped one of my raccoon cards into her jacket pocket. I pulled back and licked my lips just to get her worked up and pecked her lips again before flipping backward and grabbing hold of a lamppost to climb and jump back onto a building.

There was a moment of silence while I did so, and Carmelita stayed frozen behind. Then she touched her lips once, quickly, and rose her gun with a yell of, "GET BACK HERE COOPER!"

A grin stretched across my face as she continued to yell, mostly promises to lock me away in jail for the rest of my life, and the next. The chase began again.

I made a loop around the town, then when we returned to the very spot where I'd kissed her, I paused, waved, and blew a kiss. She howled with apparent rage, though the blush to her cheeks told me otherwise.

I dodged a shot from her stun gun, and from my pocket pulled a smoke bomb. I tossed it to the ground at my feet, finally dropping onto the ground in an alley to run through a tunnel which I knew led to the safe house. I'd lost her when I dropped the smoke bomb. With those I could give anyone the slip, and though I wasn't particularly joyed to slip away from the Inspector, she was no exception.

When I stepped inside the safe house I found Bentley and Murray there, the former tapping away on his computer and muttering to himself and the latter noisily eating a bag of peanuts. They'd obviously noticed when Carmelita spotted me and made a run for it, knowing I'd rather let the fox chase me than hop into the van with them. What they didn't know was that when I'd let her chase me tonight, I'd also, momentarily, let her catch me.

"Finished making out so soon?" Bentley asked, without looking up from his computer screen.

I froze, turning to gaze at him in question. "Uhhh, Bentley?"

He smiled. "Did you think the camera clipped to your collar and the earpiece just stopped working when you left the party?"

A blush quickly colored my cheeks, but Bentley merely laughed. Murray was chanting some children's poem about sitting and kissing in trees.

I bit down my embarrassment and barked a laugh, swiping harmlessly at Murray with my cane to get him to stop chanting. He dissolved into a fit of laughter, the same sort that Bentley was just recovering from.

Bentley wiped at his eye beneath his large glasses and smiled apologetically. "Sorry, Sly. But it's so... A fourth generation police inspector and a Cooper theif. How unlikely."

I grinned. "How exciting." I countered.

"How dangerous," he pointed out.

"Exactly."

(A/N)

Just thought I'd write a short story about my favorite kids' video game. Sorry I've been so MIA. I'll try to get some other stuff up on my drabbles soon. Stay lovely. OH YEAH. I don't own Sly Cooper or have any real right to its characters. All that belongs to Sucker Punch. ;)


End file.
